1. FIELD
A board spacer for securing two boards, such as printed circuit boards, or a mounting surface and a board, such as an electronic-device chassis and a printed circuit board, a fixed distance apart; and for conveniently stacking boards spaced with other board spacers of this design.
2. PRIOR ART
Traditional board spacers use posts with screws to secure themselves between boards, or between a mounting surface and a board. Screws are usually tedious to use, and are often unusable in the small space typically available in electronic devices. The board spacer 101 in U.S. Pat. No. 4,527,312, shown in FIG. 7, addresses this problem. The spacer 101 has an upper part 103 and a lower part 102, interconnected by a hinge 104. The lower part 102 has a resilient base 105 and anchor 106 between which a board may be secured. The upper part 103 has a latch 107 for latching onto and thus securing a board.
The anchor 106 and latch 107 are positioned to hold the mounted boards a fixed distance apart. The latch 107 includes a handle 108 at its upper end to aid the user in engaging and detaching the boards. The handle 108 includes a slope 109 to ease insertion and removal of a board. The upper part 103 has an insertion guide 110 on its upper surface and a recess 111 for receiving the anchor 106 of another board spacer 101. The embodiment shown in FIG. 7 enables the board spacer 101 to couple with like spacers to secure a number of boards 112a, 112b, 112c & 112d a fixed distance apart.
This spacer 101 is easy to install, but difficult to remove. As indicated in FIG. 7, because the hinge 104 is resilient, to disengage a spacer 101 the user must simultaneously: pull on the handle 108, prevent the hinge 104 from bending by holding the board (in this example 112b) down, and remove the board 112b by lifting from the spacer 101. This awkwardness makes the spacer 101 tedious to use. Moreover, the resiliency of the hinge 104 makes the spacer 101 vertically unstable allowing stacked boards 112a-d to bounce during transportation.
A spacer 101 is stacked by inserting its anchor 106 into the recess 111 in another such spacer 101. The resiliency of the anchor 106 allows the spacer to rock horizontally in the recess 111 on the lower spacer 101 making the coupling horizontally unstable. This squeezes the anchor 106, which can allow the spacers 101 to uncouple. The boards 112a-d may be damaged by this bouncing, rocking, and uncoupling during transportation.